Calibration of oscillation amplitude in Dynamic Scanning Force Microscopy

Abstract: A method to precisely calibrate the oscillation amplitude in Dynamic Scanning Force Microscopy is described. It is experimentally shown that a typical electronics used to process the dynamic motion of the cantilever can be adjusted to transfer the thermal noise of the cantilever motion from its resonance frequency to a much lower frequency within the typical bandwidth of the corresponding electronics. Therefore, the thermal noise measured in the in-phase ("phase") and out of phase ("amplitude") output of such an electronics can be related to the thermal energy $kT$. If the force constant of the cantilever is known then the oscillation amplitude can be precisely calibrated from the thermal power measured in these signals. Based on this concept, two procedures for the calibration of the oscillation amplitude are proposed. One is based on simple calculation of the Root Mean Square (RMS) measured at the outputs of the electronics used to process the dynamic motion of the cantilever, and the other one is based on analysis of the corresponding spectrum and the calculation of the quality factor, the resonance frequency and the signal strength.